s at your
elbow. We can see our way to the door well enough, now."

In order to carry out these instructions, it became necessary for me
to remain a few paces in the rear of my companion, and I think I have
never experienced such a pang of nameless terror as pierced me at the
moment of extinguishing the light; for Smith had not yet opened the
door, and the utter darkness of The Gables was horrible beyond
expression. Surely darkness is the most potent weapon of the Unknown.
I know that at the moment my hand left the switch I made for the door
as though the hosts of hell pursued me. I collided violently with
Smith. He was evidently facing toward me in the darkness, for at the
moment of our collision he grasped my shoulder as in a vice.

"My God, Petrie! look behind you!" he whispered.

I was enabled to judge of the extent and reality of his fear by the
fact that the strange subterfuge of addressing me always as Pearce was
forgotten. I turned in a flash....

Never can I forget what I saw. Many strange and terrible memories are
mine, memories stranger and more terrible than those of the average
man; but this _thing_ which now moved slowly down upon us through the
impenetrable gloom of that haunted place was (if the term be
understood) almost absurdly horrible. It was a mediaeval legend come to
life in modern London; it was as though some horrible chimera of the
black and ignorant past was become create and potent in the present.

A luminous hand--a hand in the veins of which fire seemed to run so
that the texture of the skin and the shape of the bones within were
perceptible--in short a hand of glowing, fiery flesh, clutching a
short knife or dagger which also glowed with the same hellish,
infernal luminance, was advancing upon us where we stood--was not
three paces removed!

What I did or how I came to do it, I can never recall. In all my years
I have experienced nothing to equal the stark panic which seized upon
me then. I know that I uttered a loud and frenzied cry: I know that I
tore myself like a madman from Smith's restraining grip....

"Don't touch it! Keep away, for your life!" I heard....

But, dimly I recollect that, finding the thing approaching yet
nearer, I lashed out with my fists--madly, blindly--and struck
something palpable....

What was the result, I cannot say. At that point my recollections
merge into confusion. Something or some one (Smith, as I afterwards
discovered) was hauling me by main f